Peanutty Energy Bars

This recipe was a winner in the 2001 Plains Peanut Festival Recipe Contest in Plains, Georgia and appears here courtesy of the The Peanut Institute. It was also reprinted in Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook. Clark writes: This prizewinning recipe offers a yummy alternative to commercial energy bars. These homemade bars are perfect for when you are hiking or biking, as well as for a satisfying afternoon snack. They are relatively high in fat, but it's healthful fat from peanuts and sunflower seeds. For variety, make this recipe with cashews and cashew butter and add a variety of dried fruits (cranberries, cherries, and dates).

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Ingredients

1/2 cup (60 g) roasted sunflower seed kernels, or use more peanuts or other nuts

1/2 cup (80 g) raisins or other dried fruit

2 cups (160 g) uncooked oatmeal, old-fashioned or instant

2 cups (50 g) toasted rice cereal, such as Rice Krispies

1/2 cup (130 g) peanut butter, crunchy or creamy

1/2 cup (100 g) packed brown sugar

1/2 cup (120 ml) light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

Optional: 1/4 cup toasted wheat germ

Preparation

Mix together the first six ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside. Combine peanut butter, brown sugar and corn syrup in a large bowl. Microwave on high for 2 minutes. Add vanilla and stir until blended. Add dry ingredients from medium bowl. Stir until coated. Spoon mixture into an 8-inch square pan coated with non-stick spray. Press down firmly (It helps to spray fingers with nonstick spray). Let stand about 1 hour. Cut into bars.

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Reviews

Add me to the cooks who had a dry, crumbly finished product. The taste was good (with only 1/2 the corn syrup) but not exceptional. One of my favorite ingredients -- the Rice Krispies! I will give it one more try but I'm going to add marshmallows a la Rice Krispie Squares and see how it goes.

Easy! Fits the bill to replace expensive store-bought alternatives, but a little overboard on the sugar, which is why it tastes so good. To eliminate crumbliness: Use 9" x 13" pan, after filling pan, then cover with a plastic bag and use your hands to compress it down. Wait until the next day to cut into squares.

Love this recipe for it'e ease of
preparation and flavor. Using the wheat
germ adds to flavor, and nutrition.
I've subbed honey and agave syrup for
the corn syrup, and like to use a
tropical dried fruit mix, along with
some added toasted, dried coconut.

I love the taste but they are too crumbly and misbehaving to be called bars. I will work with the sticky ingredients to remedy this problem. I too played with the ingredients based on the reviews. I used honey roasted almonds, salted peanuts, rice krispie cereal, whole oats, dried strawberries from Jungle Jim's, regular peanut butter, 50/50 agave nectar and honey, and vanilla. They taste like a PB&J sandwich. I make the Kashi bars often and they are gooey and stick together better than these so I might start by adding some molasses or maple syrup. It's a keeper of a recipe. Just know that you might be serving it in a cup or bowl and not as a bar.

Fantastic recipe. These bars taste better than any energy/granola bar you'll find at the supermarket and the recipe is easy to modify to suit your tastes.
Make it on your stovetop. It keeps the mix warm and makes it easier to combine the ingredients. If you get it heated through it also makes it easy to spread in the baking dish. I was able to cut the brown sugar in half (and used honey/maple syrup for the corn syrup) and the bars still came out great.
I'll fool around with reducing the sweeteners in future batches, these come out quite sweet.

Really good concept.
Instead of microwaving the wet ingredients, I did it stovetop, so that I could keep the mix warm while combining everything.
Subbed in some different nuts and cereal, with great results!
Looking forward to experimenting with this one!

I made it per the instructions, and
it's a crumbly mess. Yummy, but more
like gorp than a bar --
disappointing. I did put some
chocolate in for 1/5 of the nuts,
which helped glue it together, but
like others have found, it was
difficult to stir it all together
quickly enough, and it didn't hold
once out of the pan.
Maybe I'll try heating the wet
ingredients on the stove -- they
might stay hot longer so I can mix it
better. And maybe add the wet to the
dry instead of vice versa? Or maybe
I'll just look for another recipe...

Weirdly easy (took me five minutes, maybe). I omitted the dried fruit element but otherwise followed exactly. Definitely not so good for you in terms of sugar content, but better all around than processed crapola granola bars. Very tasty stuff.

This tastes great, but mine didn't hold
together. I left it overnight and it was
pretty crumbly - any advice? Although we
can't send it for school lunches (nut free
environment), I like it for after school
treats.

I would give this 4 forks,
except...the first time I made it,
the wet ingredients looked too dry
(I had gotten distracted) and then
the whole thing looked too dry when
I mixed it up. So, I made another
batch of the wet ingedients and
mixed it in as well. To no one's
surprise, the bars were so moist
they just fell apart. I am now
making my second batch, and did not
screw up the wet ingredients.
However, the whole thing still
looked too dry and not at all like
the bars would have any integrity
after cutting. And there's lots of
loose oats and wheat germ that did not pick up the wet mixture. It is, as I type, in the oven. I'm hoping
warming it up will somehow melt the
peanut butter/honey/sugar mix and
infuse the loose stuff so that this
will make actual bars. Instead of
just awesome, crumbly topping for my
ice cream.

Made these for my son's preschool class
and everyone loved them. I was asked
to print the recipe so everyone could
have a copy (kids & teachers). Used
dried blueberries & dried cherries for
the fruit. Cut the bars small, since
they don't hold together very well.

The kids can't stop eating this, my
7 year old couldn't keep his fingers
out of it before it set. Made some
replacements -- almond butter and
cashews in place of the peanut
butter and peanuts, agave and honey
instead of corn syrup. Used a mix
of raisins, diced prunes, diced
figs, craisins and dried mango. In
an 8x8 pan they are about 1" thick,
so used a 9x13 instead. The recipe
says to mix the first 6 ingredients,
but there are only 5 dry
ingredients, the optional sixth
ingredient is at the end of the list.

I am giving this 3 stars for now. I made them for a long distance cycling ride and thought they packed well and tasted great. I went with all peanuts and dates for dried fruit but like another reviewer commented, I had a difficult time to mix everything together before the mixture hardened! Work very quickly! It is hard to keep everything together otherwise.

Also, re: the nutritional value -
while the type of fats in this bar
aren't specified, the ingredients
are all foods that contain
predominately "good" fats - poly and
monounsaturated fats - which
actually reduce your overall levels
of saturated fat and lower
triglycerides. Yes, I wouldn't go
and eat 3 of these in a row, but as
a snack or "power" bar, these are a
great, healthy and tasty option.
Better than most of the processed,
sitting-on-the-shelf bars out there
with lots of refined sugars and
preservatives.

Love this! I am no longer buying
granola bars or energy bars
anymore. I made my bars using
almond butter and they turned out
delicious. I plan to make the next
batch with peanut butter & chocolate
chips. The possibilities are
endless! Just a word of warning: Be
sure to mix quickly when adding the
hot syrup to the dry ingredients. I
took my time and wasn't able to mix
all of my dry ingredients as the
syrup hardens fast.

Simple, tasty, and a great before a
workout. I went with natural peanut
butter, almonds, and whole grain
cereal with granola. This recipe has
a lot of room to play around with
ingredients to make it your own.

I'm going to try these this weekend, to share with my ultimate frisbee team.
I just wanted to comment on the last post about the carb content. High carbs are desirable in an energy bar. It's useable energy. A typical Clif bar has about 40-45 gm carbs.

I made this to eat on a long distance bike ride. I made several substitutions to this recipe. The end result was very good...great flavor/texture, denser, more complex carbs and heart healthy oils, greater vitamin value, and natural sugars. Here are the substitutions:
Dried Fruit: 3 mashed ripe bananas
Regular Peanut Butter: All Natural Peanut Butter (drain oil and replace with honey and salt to taste)
Peanuts: Slivered Almonds, finely chopped
Rice Krispies: Whole grain cereal with high vitamin/mineral content (such as Total), crushed
Corn Syrup: Raw honey
Wheat Germ: Milled Flax Seed
*OPTIONAL: 1/8-1/4tsp cinnamon (complements both the bananas and the PB)